The Sweetest Thing

About four months ago, I moved from the heart (read: the most expensive part) of Saint Louis' Central West End neighborhood to the "gentrifying" (read: used to be dangerous, now is rapidly developing) neighborhood just to the south of the CWE. The house that we have moved into is more than twice the size of our old apartment, has as many or more amenities, its own yard, and is exactly the same cost to us monthly. So we have to set the burglar alarm every day; it's so worth it.

The restaurant "Sweetie Pie's at the Mangrove" has attracted me since we moved, for several reasons: one, it has a neon sign that we can tell people to look for when they're trying to follow the directions to our new house; two, I like the sign itself, for the neon ice cream cones (though several layers appear to have burned out recently), and its design in general; three, I just want to eat there (it's soul food, and supposedly quite good); four, it gives me a daily head scratcher about the origin of the "Mangrove" part (our mini-neighborhood is sometimes called just "The Grove," after the Tower Grove neighborhood further south), but no mangrove trees grow for hundreds of miles to the south of here.

Melroy's is just a bonus neon storefront about a half block down. I guess it's a tattoo parlor, though I've never looked closely. I don't think I'd want to get a tattoo there in general, especially since they've been advertising for a new tattoo artist for as long as I've been driving past it.

On a photographic note, I realize that both of these pictures should have been taken in twilight low-light (rather than no light), but earlier today I had planned to take them a bit after I (should have) left work at 7:00 PM, and didn't end up being able to do it until about 9:00 PM. Sorry. Better new pictures coming up soon, I promise.

Tomorrow: ideally, some new pix of Central West End life